[openstack-dev] [trove][sahara][infra][Octavia][manila] discussion of image building in Trove
Mariam John
mariamj at us.ibm.com
Thu May 5 14:43:27 UTC 2016
From: Victoria Martínez de la Cruz <victoria at vmartinezdelacruz.com>
To: "OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions)"
<openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>
Date: 05/05/2016 08:12 AM
Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [trove][sahara][infra][Octavia][manila]
discussion of image building in Trove
Hi all,
A few things:
- I agree that moving from DIB to libguestfs is a bold move and that we
should try to avoid changing tools unless highly necessary. The downsides
we found for DIB are detailed in this spec [0] and Ethan (in this same
thread) also added valid points on the Sahara case. My concern here is,
should we stick with DIB just because is the standard for image creation?
Shouldn't we take in consideration that some projects, like Sahara, are
moving away from?
I think it would be worth trying to see if DIB can address the concerns
raised by the different projects around image building and improve upon
that. By improving DIB, I think all these projects and OpenStack in general
can benefit from it.
- In the long term it would be ideal that we reach to a common solution for
image creation for all the projects that need tailored images: Trove,
Sahara, Octavia, Manila, and IIRC, Kolla and Cue.
- In the short term, I'm on board or working on having tools based on DIB
for image creation in Trove.
- Amrith, Pete is working on the image creation process for Trove. The spec
is up there [0]. I think is his work to kick-off that repository.
Best,
Victoria
[0] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/295274/
2016-05-04 23:20 GMT-03:00 Amrith Kumar <amrith at tesora.com>:
As we discussed at summit, (and consistent with all of the comments) we
should move ahead with the project to advance the image builder for Trove
and make it easier to build guest images for Trove by leveraging the DIB
elements that we have in trove-integration.
To that end, the infra [1] and governance [2] changes have been submitted
for review. The Launchpad tracker [3] has been registered.
I am working on taking the existing DIB elements in trove-integration and
putting them in the new repository (openstack/trove-image-builder). I am
also going to continue to watch this conversation and record any
shortcomings with the existing DIB elements in Launchpad [3] and work on
fixing those as well. Pete mentions one in his earlier email and I’ve
logged that in Launchpad [4].
Thanks,
-amrith
[1] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/312805/
[2] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/312806/
[3] https://launchpad.net/trove-image-builder
[4] https://bugs.launchpad.net/trove-image-builder/+bug/1578454
From: Mariam John [mailto:mariamj at us.ibm.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2016 4:19 PM
To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) <
openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>
Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [trove][sahara][infra][Octavia][manila]
discussion of image building in Trove
The way I see this, these are the 2 main concerns I have been hearing
regarding image building in Trove:
1) making the process simple and easy for users
2) addressing the issue of security
I dont think there is any argument regarding the benefits of moving the
database elements to a seperate repository and packaging and managing
them from there.
It looks like the case that we make for whether to use libguestfs or DIB
for image building are in the technical details of how image building
happens and their nuances - assuming that ease of use & having a simple
interface to build secure images matters most, I wonder if the end-users
would be concerned about these details.
By addressing some of the issues like:
- moving the Trove elements to a new repository
- adding support for new distros
- creating a wrapper script for building an image -getting the Trove
guest agent code & configuration files
- managing environment variables better
I believe it will make a huge improvement in terms of simplifying and
improving the ease of use for end users and hence could be the low
hanging fruit that we can implement in the mean time. I agree that
switching from DIB to any other tool is a big step and we need to put
alot of thought into it like many others have suggested. Like Pete
mentioned earlier in one of the links, there are couple of other tools
available for building images. I am sure we could make the case for each
of these tools and how it is easier/faster/better than the others. If we
go down this route experimenting with libguestfs, is there anything
stopping us couple of releases down the lane from wanting to experiment
with some other tool because libguestfs doesn't perform well? The end
user could use any tool they want to use to create images if they wish to
do so but I agree and believe that Trove should support a standard way of
building images (DIB being an OpenStack project, I would assume that
would be the standard) and do it well keeping it simple and easy to use
as opposed to what it is today.
I think we should split this into 2 tasks
- one for going forward with seperating image building into a seperate
repository and putting all efforts into simplifying the current process,
and
- second, to have a joint collaboration with the DIB/TripleO team to
raise concerns regarding DIB and see if we can address them in turn OR if
using a different tool like libguestfs makes sense at that point.
Thanks,
Mariam.
Inactive hide details for Peter MacKinnon ---05/04/2016 12:39:15 PM---On
5/4/16 12:52 PM, Gregory Haynes wrote: > On Wed, May 4Peter MacKinnon
---05/04/2016 12:39:15 PM---On 5/4/16 12:52 PM, Gregory Haynes wrote: >
On Wed, May 4, 2016, at 08:55 AM, Flavio Percoco wrote:
From: Peter MacKinnon <pmackinn at redhat.com>
To: openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org
Date: 05/04/2016 12:39 PM
Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [trove][sahara][infra][Octavia][manila]
discussion of image building in Trove
On 5/4/16 12:52 PM, Gregory Haynes wrote:
> On Wed, May 4, 2016, at 08:55 AM, Flavio Percoco wrote:
>> On 04/05/16 15:05 +0000, Amrith Kumar wrote:
>>> I'm emailing the ML on the subject of a review ongoing in the Trove
project regarding image building[1].
>>>
>>> TL;DR
>>>
>>> One of the most frequent questions that new users of Trove ask is how
and where to get guest images with which to experiment with Trove, and
how to build these images for themselves. While documentation about this
exists in multiple places (including [2], [3]) this is still something
that can do with some improvement.
>>>
>>> Trove currently uses diskimage-builder for building images used in
testing the product and these can serve as a good basis for anyone
wishing to build an image for their own use of Trove. The review [1]
makes the argument for the libguestfs based approach to building images
and advocates that Trove should use this instead of diskimage-builder.
>> At the summit we discussed the possibility of providing an
implementation
>> that
>> would allow for both DIB and libguestfs to be used but to give
priority
>> to DIB.
>> Since there's no real intention of just switching tools at this point,
I
>> believe
>> it'd be good to amend the spec so that it doesn't mention libguestfs
>> should be
>> used instead of DiB.
>>
>> The goal at this stage is to provide both and help these move forward.
>>
>>> I believe that a broader discussion of this is required and I
appreciate Greg Haynes' proposal at the design summit to have this
discussion on the ML. I took the action item to bring this discussion to
the ML.
>>>
>>> Details follow ...
>>>
>>> Before going further, I will state my views on these matters.
>>>
>>> 1. It is important for the Trove project to do things quickly to make
it easier for end users who wish to use Trove and who wish to build their
own images. I am not concerned what tool or tools a person will use to
build these images.
> ++. One of the biggest issues I see users of DIB hit is ease of use for
> 'just make me an image, I don't care about twiddling knobs'. A wrapper
> script in trove is one way to help with this, but I am sure there are
> other solutions as well... maybe by rethinking some of our fear about
> using elements as entry points to an image build, or by simply making
> element's with better defaults.
>
>>> 2. If we provide multiple alternatives to image building as part of
the Trove project, we should make sure that images built with all sets of
tools are equivalent and usable interchangeably. Failing to do this will
make it harder for users to use Trove because we will be providing them
with a false choice (i.e. the alternatives aren't really alternatives).
This is harder than it sounds given the combination of tools, operating
systems, and the source(s) from which you can get database software.
>> Maintaining both in the long run will be harder especially because, as
>> you
>> mentioned, the output must be usable interchangeably. However, I think
>> we're at
>> a point, based on the comments in [1] made by Pino Toscano, Luigi
Toscano
>> and
>> some other folks that it'd be beneficial for us to have this
discussion
>> and to
>> also experiment/test other options.
>>
>> The Sahara team seems to be going in a direction that differs with the
>> one used
>> by the infra team and the one we're headed to (although they overlap
in
>> some
>> areas).
>>
> I would highly recommend against having two sets of image building code
> for Trove - given DIB's current design there should not be any need for
> this and there's a HUGE downside to maintaining two sets of code to do
> the same thing in-tree. Ideally a single set of code would be used
while
> being able to be run in different environments if there are mutually
> exclusive requirements being proposed by users.
Well, certainly one downside in the case of Trove (and probably
elsewhere) with DIB is the src tree matrix of datastore-by-distro
elements required to support various guest image combinations, leading
to a proliferation of directories and files. We feel this can be greatly
simplified using a libguestfs approach using a minimal set of bash and
directly applicable data files (e.g., systemd unit files, conf files,
etc.).
>
> What seemed very apparent to me in the summit session is that there are
> a set of issues for Trove relating to image building, mostly relating
to
> reliability and ease of use. There was no one who even mentioned let
> alone strongly cared about the issues which actually differentiate the
> existing DIB build process from libguestfs (which is isolation). If
that
> has changed for some reason, then my recommendation would be to use a
> tool like virt-dib which will allow for a single image building code
> base while solving all the raised issues in the spec. I suspect when
> this is tried out the downsides to booting a VM will highly outweigh
the
> benefits for almost all users (especially in trove's gate),
Anecdotally, it takes the same amount of time for a CentOS7 MySQL build
(~ 7 minutes) with either toolchain.
> but if the
> libguestfs docs are to be believed this should be trivial to try out.
Not quite sure what you mean by "to be believed"?
>
>
>>> 3. Trove already has elements for all supported databases using DIB
in the trove-integration project but these elements are not packaged for
customer use. Making them usable by customers is a relatively small
effort including providing a wrapper script (derived from redstack[4])
and providing an element to install the guest agent software from a fixed
location in addition to the development and testing version that is
better suited to Trove development [5] and [6].
>>>
>>> 4. My comments on various patch sets in the review[1].
>>>
>>> I agree with Monty and Greg Haynes that we should understand the
deficiencies if any in DIB, and if it is in fact the case that they are
"intractable/unsolvable", we should switch toolchains. This discussion
should include issues faced by the Trove team as well as other teams that
may have faced problems with DIB (such as the sahara team who described
some of them in the past).
>> ++
>>
>> Agreed with the above. I'm think collaboration should be the preferred
>> way. I
>> don't think I've enough technical insight on this topic to provide a
>> detailed
>> list of things that are good/bad on either of these tools but I wanted
to
>> mention that I believe providing support for both in the short run is
>> good for
>> us and it helps to make a better decision on what tool works best for
the
>> project.
> Rewriting image building code in order to find out if we want to use a
> tool seems completely backwards. Obviously, if some external team wants
> to do this there's nothing stopping them, but what we should focus on
> are what problems actually effect out user base and what we can do to
> solve them. We should *not* be focusing on finding ways to support
> various image building frameworks without a clear benefit to doing so.
The various image building frameworks have been noted here
http://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/create-images-automatically.html
including libguestfs. So it's not like it is an unknown quantity. In the
interest of innovation I'm not sure I understand the hearty reluctance
to explore this path. We are proposing simply another Trove repo with an
alternate (and recognized) image build method. This is not displacing
any established tool for Trove; such a tool doesn't exist today. The
elements in trove-integration don't really count since they are largely
developed for Ubuntu only, inject Trove guestagent src from git only,
and, beyond MySQL 5.6, are not tested by the gate.
>
>> There's someone willing to do the job and spend sometime doing the
>> research.
>> This same person will provide feedback in addition to the one already
>> provided
>> in [1].
>>
>> Sorry for not providing much technical details now but I did want to
>> share the
>> above. Thanks for starting this thread, I believe this discussion in
the
>> ML will
>> be beneficial.
>>
>> Flavio
>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> -amrith
>>>
>>>
>>> [1] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/295274/
>>> [2]
http://docs.openstack.org/developer/trove/dev/building_guest_images.html
>>> [3]
https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/diskimage-builder/tree/README.rst#writing-an-element
>>> [4]
http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/trove-integration/tree/scripts/redstack
>>> [5]
http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/trove-integration/tree/scripts/files/trove-guest.systemd.conf
>>> [6]
http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/trove-integration/tree/scripts/files/trove-guest.upstart.conf
>>>
>>>
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>> --
>> @flaper87
>> Flavio Percoco
>>
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